John Meehan pinned his stepdaughter, Terra Newell, to the ground in his sister’s driveway, but dropped his knife, which she grabbed and then stabbed him 13 times.
“I heard him gasp and fall on top of me as I started to make contact,” Newell told Fox News Digital in an exclusive video interview. “I held his head like a zombie so he wouldn’t bite me, and then I thought about the last two stab wounds.
“I stabbed him in the forehead, and the last (stab) was through his eye, which is the softest entry point to the brain, which was the one that caused brain damage… I pushed him away from me. I threw the knife away from his body, so he couldn’t get hold of it, and then he studied a way to get away from it.”
Several residents of sunny Irvine, Southern California, rushed to Newell’s aid, but none of them knew that today, August 20, 2016, was the end of a con-manipulator’s multi-state reign of terror.
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(L-R) Arlane Hart, Debra Newell and Terra Newell attend the Bravo Anthology Series “Dirty John” World Premiere After-Party at NeueHouse Los Angeles on November 13, 2018 in Hollywood, California.
(Rich Fury/Getty Images)
Meehan, nicknamed “Dirty John,” was the focus of Los Angeles Times reporter Christopher Goffard’s true crime podcast after his extensive coverage of the case, which was later profiled in documentaries and a Netflix series.
After the attack, Terra said: “I just remember saying, ‘My name is Terra. That was a stepfather. He tried to kill me. My name is Terra. That was my stepfather. He tried to kill me.’ And I kept saying it over and over again. “.
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Meehan was a former nurse anesthesiologist who preyed on women he considered easy targets, including Newell’s mother, Debra Newell, whom he met on a 50+ dating site in October 2014.
That was shortly after a stint in jail for violating a restraining order against another woman.
When he met Debra, Meehan told her he was an anesthesiologist working in Iraq with Doctors Without Borders, among other lies, to make her fall in love.
The John Meehan case was the subject of an Oxygen special, “Dirty John: The Dirty Truth.”
(Oxygen)
The relationship didn’t feel right for Terra and her sister, and Terra got into a heated confrontation before Thanksgiving 2014, when she found out that Meehan and her mother were living together.
Despite her daughters’ objections, Debra and Meehan had a Las Vegas wedding in December 2014 with no guests and had three months of wedded bliss before a family member alerted Debra to Meehan’s criminal record.
She called it quits in March 2015, they got back together in June 2015 until she finally left Meehan for good in March 2016 and filed for an annulment in April 2016.
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That’s when Meehan disbanded and the situation turned violent, Terra said.
“Any time a narcissist, sociopath or psychopath loses control over someone, that’s when you’re most likely to be attacked or killed,” Terra said. “People like John don’t like to lose control. That means they lost a sense of self. And so, for him, he literally lost control.
“My mom dumped him a second time. He wasn’t getting any more money from her. He was starting to expose this person. And when you expose these kinds of people, that’s what really makes them angry.”
The night before she attacked Terra, Meehan showed up at her mother’s house, but was chased by her sister, Jacquelyn, and her friend. Meehan jumped back into her car and sped away from her.
Terra said Meehan also sent messages threatening to kill her mother, bury her body in the backyard, and then “was going to add me and my sister.”
The next day, he tried to kill Terra.
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“He grabbed me around the waist. She looked me in the eye and said: ‘Do you remember me?’ And I looked at him and I didn’t say anything because I immediately tried to run away from him,” Terra said.
But she couldn’t escape. She suffered several blows to the ribs that she originally thought were punches.
“So I took out my bag to protect my heart right before he got me, and they were just hitting me, I thought. He covered my mouth. I hit him as hard as I could. I bit him. He was screaming and I just tried to run away and fight back,” Terra said.
He had a service dog that barked and bit Meehan during the fight in the driveway.
“I fell backwards, and I landed on my right shoulder. And then he was on top of me. That’s when I realized he was actually stabbing me because he hid the knife in a Del Taco bag,” she said.
The blade grazed his cheek, and later he discovered cuts on his arm and defensive wounds.
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The knife fell to his side during the fight. She remembers grabbing it and stabbing Meehan. She delivered the thirteenth and final blow through her eye and escaped.
Terra, now 31 years old, has learned to cope with trauma and severe panic attacks while recovering, physically and mentally.
In a 2019 interview with Fox News, Terra said that “he’s healed a lot.”
“People need to know that bad things can happen, and you should never let those things stop you or get you down. The most important thing I’ve learned is to keep going and stay positive,” Terra said.
“I’m so happy to be alive to share this message, to reflect on all the amazing opportunities that came from such a traumatic event, and to celebrate another year of living life to the fullest.”
Terra Newell opens up about stepfather John Meehan’s attack on her in 2016 in a Fox News Digital interview.
(Fox Digital News)
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Nearly four years after that interview, he said, there are still times when a chain of events could trigger a spiral, such as barking dogs, hateful comments on social media or a TV scene in which a survivor defends himself against an attack.
“All those little triggers add up, and then I’m in a bad place,” he said.
But now he is in a better place and works with other survivors and the families of survivors.
